Albright Professor Studies Tango in Buenos Aires

Andrew Kaye (music) applied for and received support to spend the month of August (2004) in Buenos Aires, Argentina to study tango and contemporary musical life. Andrew studied two styles of tango--tango de salon, and tango milonguero--with teachers at the Escuela Argentina de Tango, the Mora Godoy Tango studio, and the Ana Maria Schapira academy for tango milonguero.

The two styles are rather different. The tango de salon, also called "open embrace" tango, is perhaps the more famous, as it is the basis of much of the staged tango that the world public has enjoyed since the tango revival of the mid-1980s. This style of tango allows for much freedom of movement and variation, especially on the part of the female dancer. It involves a basic sequence of 8 steps, and incorporates many complex ornaments and variations, including the ocho (figure 8 movement), pivots, giros ("turns," including 180 and 360 degree turns), hesitations, and foot ornaments.

Practitioners of this style are typically youthful, thin, and athletic, and this style has attracted many professional dancers, some coming from ballet, and couples who set out on a program to develop and perfect this complex and romantic choreography danced to an equally complex and romantic music. (Because it allows for many variations, the salon style may be danced to tangos into which many rubatos-temporary changes of tempo-are incorporated, as in tangos as performed by the Pugliese orchestra).

When the couples are really good, they may remind the viewer of the choreographic charm and surprise of Astaire and Rogers. The tango milonguero, also called the "closed embrace" tango, is the kind of tango one sees when one frequents the many milongas (dance halls) of Buenos Aires and its surrounding province. As the embrace is extremely close, there is less room for some of the variations that are common in the tango de salon (indeed, some milongueros criticize the open style as being too "acrobatic").

Milongueros believe that their style is the one that really reflects the porteño soul, seriously passionate and romantic, but also very grounded, down-to-earth (the word porteño is an adjective describing the culture and people of Buenos Aires-a port city). The milonguero style is a slow, purposeful, dramatic walking style, with its own complexities of rhythmic hesitations, foot embellishments, and syncopations. The bodies of the two dancers must be in perfect harmony.

Although less complicated than the salon style, it can be difficult to master the basics of milonguero, for both the man, who must lead, and the woman, who must follow. Other styles danced in the milongas include the milonga, which is a dance with a jaunty rhythm, which seems to recall the Brazilian maxixe and the foxtrot; and the valsa (tango waltz), which provides complex tango steps danced to a waltz rhythm (the 3 beats to a measure triple meter). Late at night, in some milongas, an occasional rock-and-roll will be played, to which people will dance in swing and jitterbug style. One might also be fortunate to see individuals or groups performing dances from Argentina's "country" traditions (called folklore in Argentina), such as the chacarera and zamba.

While in Buenos Aires, Andrew also conducted research on musical categories used in Argentine record stores, and began a musical questionnaire survey project, in collaboration with Camila Juarez, a graduate student inmusicology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). Andrew taught a 32-hour graduate course on "La musica y el cine" (Music and Cinema) at UBA's Facultad de Filosofia y Letras (Faculty of Philosophy and Letters), and gave a public lecture at the Museu Etnografico (Ethnographic Museum) as part of a cultural program entitled "Encuentros sobre cultura africana" (Encounters on African culture), sponsored by the Spanish and South African embassies, and UBA. For this program, Andrew gave a multimedia presentation (in Portuguese, with some Spanish mixed in) on the topic, "From Hymns to Highlife and Hip-Hop: The Rise of Modern African Music," and introduced his newly published book on the subject, Musica dell'Africa Nera ( co-authored with Leonardo D'Amico, published by Edizione L'Epos in July 2004).

Andrew reports that, beyond the daily highlights of tango lessons, teaching a highly motivated group of graduate students, dinners at students' homes, and meetings with friends old and new, one of the most delightful parts of his visit was meeting Charles Olu Afolabi, an extraordinarily enthusiastic milonguero from London (originally from Nigeria). Charles became an invaluable guide to the nocturnal world of porteño milongas, and one among many friends from Buenos Aires with whom Andrew remains in contact via email. Andrew is currently preparing a course on the cultural history of the tango, for the coming interim at Albright College.